Udawalawe - Tangalle

The journey from Udawalawe to Tangalle was not too far. And there we were: at the beautiful Madilla Beach. The hotel was nothing special, as our room was very small and the floors were not really clean. But there were no mosquitoes in the room and we could sleep with the balcony door open. We decided to stay here for two nights, as the beach was truly beautiful and clean (no plastic waste) and there were relatively few tourists, so there were no beach vendors or cheap souvenir shops. On our arrival day, it was very windy but beautiful. On the second day, we just wanted to explore the beach, swim, and do very little else. And since it was so beautiful, we decided to extend our stay for another day. The beach had high waves, so I already scraped my knee on the sand on the first day when I was whirled around like in a washing machine. After that, whenever we wanted to swim, we stayed near the mole built right in front of the hotel. The weather was rather April-like; in the afternoon, there was often a tropical rain, but it soon passed.

On a walk to the village, we had a conversation with some very nice fishermen and were invited for a round of arrack. They told us their personal stories about the 2004 tsunami. Impressive!